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Vision insiders question the Olympic village message

January 16th, 2009 · 29 Comments

A little bird called me today and read out an email from a Vision board member that has somehow escaped to a larger audience than intended.

The email, from Marcella Munro, went out this morning to the rest of Vision’s tight communications team, which frequently debates how well they are doing on their message. That included: Mike Magee (Gregor’s current chief of staff), Bob Penner (the polls guy who worked in tandem with Magee on the campaign), Bill Tieleman (blogger, communications guy), Ian Baillie (campaign organizer), Mike Wilson (not sure who he is — sorry, Mike), and Kevin Quinlan (wonderkind doing communications in the mayor’s office). I don’t have it word for word, since it was read out to me, but here’s the general gist.

“I think we’re overswing on the Olympics stuff. I don’t think anyone believes the city’s going to have a one-billion-dollar bill at the end of this. It feels like we’re going too far in blaming the NPA. Geoff [Meggs, now a councillor] is being too much of a pitbull, he’s using this too much for political purposes. We promised a different tone of city hall. But instead of being focused on the problem, we appear to be focused on destroying the NPA.”

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